Laurentum’s wretched families!
What reckoning, Turnus, yours to pay!
What burdens shalt thou roll,
Helmets and shields and mangled clay
Where dwelt a warrior’s soul,
Hoar Tiber! Call to arms, and break
With treacherous ease the leagues ye make!’
Awakes the altar-fires that slept,
And pays the rites of morning hours
To Hercules and home-god powers.
The Trojans and Arcadia’s king
Alike their chosen victims bring,
Then, turning shoreward, he reviews
His vessels, and arrays the crews:
Of these the first in martial might
He takes to follow him in fight:
The rest drop down the stream, to bear
Iulus tidings how they fare,
His father and the cause.
Each has his steed of all the train
That marches to the Tuscan plain;
A charger for the chief is led
With tawny lion’s hide bespread
That shines with gilded claws.
Fame to the little town relates
The horse are marching to the gates.
The matrons with redoubled zeal
Make vows to Heaven in wild appeal;
Fear closer treads on danger’s heel,
And larger looms the fray;
The tears roll down Evander’s face,
He holds his child in strict embrace,
And thus begins to say:
‘Ah! would but Jupiter restore
The strength I had in days of yore,
When conqueror in Præneste’s fields
I fired a pile of foemen’s shields
And hurried with my own right hand
King Erulus to the darksome land:
Three lives inspired that monstrous frame
When from Feronia’s womb he came:
Three swords he wielded ’gainst the foe:
Three deaths it cost to lay him low:
Yet thrice this hand shed out his gore,
And thrice stripped off the arms he wore.
Ah! never then should war’s alarms
Dispart me from my darling’s arms,
Nor had Mezentius done despite
So foully to a neighbour’s right,
Or made my widowed city feel
The havoc of his ruthless steel.
Yet O ye Gods, and O great Jove,
Have pity on a father’s love
And hear Evander’s prayer:
If ’tis your purpose to restore
My Pallas to my arms once more;
If living is to see his face,
Then grant me life, of your dear grace,
No toil too hard to bear.
But ah! if Fortune be my foe,
And meditate some crushing blow,
Now, now the thread in mercy break,
While hope sees dim and cares mistake,
While still I clasp thee, darling boy,
My latest and my only joy,
Nor let assurance, worse than fear,
With cruel tidings wound my ear.’
His speech grows faint, his limbs give way;
His slaves their master home convey.
The mounted company had passed:
Æneas and Achates lead:
The other lords of Troy succeed.
Young Pallas in the midst is seen
With broidered scarf and armour sheen:
Like Lucifer, the day-spring’s star,
To radiant Venus dearest far
Of all the sons of light,
When, bathed in ocean’s wave, he rears
His sacred presence ’mid the spheres,
And dissipates the night.
The matrons on the rampart stand:
Their straining eyes pursue
The dusty cloud, the mail-clad band
Yet glimmering on the view.
Through thicket and entangled brake
The nearest road the warriors take,
And hark! the war-cry’s sound;
The column forms, and horny feet
Recurrently the champaign beat
And shake the crumbling ground.
A grove by Cære’s river grows;
Ancestral reverence round it throws
A terror far and wide:
The shelving hills around have made
A girdle for the pine-wood shade,
Set close on every side.
’Twas there Pelasgian tribes, men say,
Who dwelt in Latium’s clime of old,
Kept good Silvanus’ holiday,
The guardian god of field and fold.
Hard by encamped there held their post
Brave Tarchon and his Tyrrhene host,
And from the hill-top might be seen
Their legions stretching o’er the green:
The Trojans join them on the mead,
And seek refreshment, man and steed.
Had journeyed through the clouds of air,
Her present in her hands:
Deep in the vale her son she spied
Reposing by the river-side,
And thus before him stands:
‘Lo, thus the Gods their word fulfil:
Behold the arms my husband’s skill
Has fashioned in a day:
Fear not conclusions soon to try
With Latium’s braggarts, but defy
E’en Turnus to the fray.’
Then to her son’s embrace she flew:
The armour ’neath an oak in view
She placed all dazzling bright.
He, glorying in the beauteous prize,
From point to point quick darts his eyes
With ever-new delight.
Now wondering ’twixt his hands he turns
The helm that like a meteor burns,
The sword that rules the war,
The breastplate shooting bloody rays,
As dusky clouds in sunlight blaze,
Refulgent from afar,
The polished greaves of molten gold,
The spear, the shield with fold on fold,
A prodigy of art untold.
There, prescient of the years to come,
Italia’s times, the wars of Rome,
The fire’s dark lord had wrought:
E’en from Ascanius’ dawning days
The generations he portrays,
The fights in order fought,
There too the mother wolf he made
In Mars’s cave supinely laid:
Around her udders undismayed
The gamesome infants hung,
While she, her loose neck backward thrown,
Caressed them fondly, one by one,
And shaped them with her tongue.
Hard by, the towers of Rome he drew,
And Sabine maids in public view
Snatched ’mid the Circus games:
So ’twixt the fierce Romulean brood
And Tatius with his Cures rude
A sudden war upflames.
And now the kings, their conflict o’er,
Stand up in arms
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